The X-Files (1993) - Season 5

Continued from The X-Files - Season 4

Note: I would like to thank Leanne Podivan for having sent several photos of her work on the episodes 'Detour', 'The Post Modern Prometheus' and 'Patient X'

The fifth season of The X-Files was the last that Lindala-Schminken FX worked on; after the release of The X-Files: Fight the Future, the series's filming moved to Los Angeles. Joining Lindala's team on the fifth season was Geoffrey Redknapp and Leanne Podivan.

For the episode 'Detour', Lindala's team had to create foam latex 'barksuits' and facial appliances for the performers playing the episode's camouflaged mutants. However, the footage of the barksuit performers was heavily altered with digital editing in post-production.

The Great Mutato makeup in 'The Post-Modern Prometheus' consisted of five separate appliances, and would take up to five to seven hours to apply on actor Chris Owens. Inside the makeup was nine servo motors to move the second 'face'. Owens was also fitted with specially sculpted gloves, dentures and contact lenses for the part.

For 'Patient X', Lindala's team had to make small makeup appliances on Alex Shostak Jr. and Brian Thompson, to depict that their eyes and mouthes had been stitched shut.

Yet again, Lindala's team also were tasked with realizing corpse dummies, such as the burnt body in 'Patient X' representing the faceless alien's victims. Several other burnt corpse props were made, but these were likely anatomy skeletons painted to appear charred.

Two more corpse props were made for 'Travelers'. The first was a full body corpse dummy with a shrivelled, sagging appearance, while the second was a dessicated head and hands.

(Note: The bottom screenshot was altered by being flipped upside down to show the corpse dummy prop better)

A dissected corpse appliance was also made for 'Travelers', with flaps of skin and a ribcage. Sadly it is only seen at a distance, and I believe the skin flap appliance was also used in 'Bad Blood' for that episode's autopsy sequence.

The most complex effect in 'Travelers' was the arachnid parasite that crawls out of its hosts mouth. The shot of the arachnid leaving the host was achieved with a dummy head that could be puppeteered to make it appear that the arachnid's legs crawling out.

An earlier shot of an arachnid being found inside an autopsy corpse was achieved in a similar manner to the worm autopsy sequence in 'The Host' back in the second season, with the arachnid prop being puppeteered from underneath the organs.

Another dummy head was required for 'All Souls', in this case a likeness of Emily Perkins' head that could have smoke emitting from the empty eye sockets.

Perkins was also required to wear more minimal appliances, such as the extra fingers on her hands during the autopsy scene.

Not even seen in 'All Souls' were the demon prosthetics utilized for a shot of a horned shadow in the episode's finale. The demon makeup consisted of a face and shoulder appliance, which were worn over a spandex bodysuit.

Most complicated of Lindala's work in 'All Souls' was the effect of the Seraphim angel that appears to Scully. The first stage of the Seraphim's transformation was achieved with a lion-like prosthetic face sculpted on the side of actor Tracy Elofson's face.

The second stage of the Seraphim's transformation, where its head would rotate to show an array of animalistic faces - a ram, a lion and an eagle. This was achieved with a puppet.

The puppet was fixed to a rotating stand, and had mechanisms inside that controlled the eyes and mouthes to open, swivel and blink.

The puppet was shot in front of a greenscreen, and was digitally edited in post-production. (In the second screenshot, you may notice the puppet has had the other 'faces' edited out, as that was footage taken during post-production).

Lindala's team was tasked with realizing the melted corpses in 'The Pine Bluff Variant'. Louisa Gradnitzer, the show's location manager, had an amusingly gross anecdote about the props.

'Lindala created the deceased theatre audience in his shop. When he brought them to set, there was nowhere in the theatre to store the 'fake' cadavers, so he placed them in the craft services room. Many of the crew lost their appetites that day.'

Another rotting corpse dummy head was made to represent the final fate of Daniel von Bargen's villain of the episode. I had to edit the contrast of the screenshot to let the prop be seen better!

Lindala's team also supplied an elaborate bug monster suit for 'Folie A Deux'. The suit had radio-controlled mechanisms inside that could allow the antennae and mandibles to twitch, the jaws to move, and drool to pour out the monster's mouth.

The suit was instantly derided by the cast and crew. Actor Gary Lambert, who portrayed one of the monster's victims in the episode, remembered the reactions on set that day.

'I saw it the first day we were shooting the hostage scene. The monster walked on the set. It was a short woman wearing a bug suit. She had some kind of breathing apparatus stuck in her throat. I thought, 'This is what's driving me crazy?' Then I looked up and I saw (director) Kim Manners. He had absolutely lost it. He just kept saying, 'Oh my god! My career! It's over!'

Vince Gilligan, the supervising producer, gave his opinions on why the bug suit was not viable for filming.

'We're usually on such a short schedule that there has to be a weak link somewhere. Part of it, I guess, was that Toby Lindala did too good a job. If anything, the bug suit was a little overengineered; the eyebrows moved and all these little antennas wiggled and stuff. If it had been a little lighter and a little less engineered it would have been easier to move in a believable fashion.

As it was, the suit weighed something like seventy pounds, and the female stuntperson had a hard time moving in it. And because she had a hard time moving, her movements made the whole thing look sort of ridiculous. In fact, it looked like someone standing on the side of the road in a big costume, saying, 'Eat at Subway'. You know what I mean?'

The bug suit on the cover of The Georgia Straight's 1999 Halloween special.

It was up to the visual effects team to fix everything in post-production. Visual effects supervisor Laurie Kallsen-George was tasked with editing over the footage of the bug monster to make it barely visible. Gilligan explained;

'We had a guy in a bug suit, and we tried everything to make him look scary. We shook him, we vibrated him (in digital editing). Looked pretty silly with the big red eyes, so we tried to disguise him with fast rapid movements, we blurred him out. Anything to take away the onus of the man in the bug suit.'

The visual effects for 'Folie A Deux' was completed on the very morning that the episode was aired, saving it in the nick of time. The digital editing had transformed the cumbersome monster suit into a shadowy, fleeting presence, something Gilligan was pleased with.

'You never really see it that closely, but that's okay. There's along, noble history to that kind of thinking. The truth is, your imagination can be much more effective than real life.'

After the fifth season, production moved to Los Angeles, with John Vulich's Optic Nerve Studios taking on the blood-stained mantle. While Lindala provided the makeup effects for Chris Carter's brooding spinoff series Millennium, his work on The X-Files was over.

Despite the fact that X-Files had put him on the map and allowed him to set up a makeup effects studio, Lindala was glad to be free of the show's heavy workload.

'It was kind of a welcome transition. I was driving myself into the ground; it was a lot of work on that scheduling. The company managed to grow comfortably with it, but it definitely kept us moving.'

Sources:

• Resist or Serve: The Official Guide to The X-Files Volume 4 (Andy Meisler, 1999)
  
• Assorted 'Behind the Truth' featurettes.
  
• The Georgia Straight 'The Gorehounds of Vancouver' (Steve Newton, October 1999)
  

Continued in Millennium and The X-Files - Season 6